


Pomegranate Seeds

by literaryvengeance (evocativecomma)



Category: Doctor Who (2005), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Roski, Whovengers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 17:59:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/726185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evocativecomma/pseuds/literaryvengeance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That voice was drawing her away, tugging at a string tied to her hand; she swore she could see it, red and shining, begging her to follow it away from her mother and into the city. She didn’t know why she trusted it, but she did. There was something right about it, something natural—something that told her if she didn’t follow it, she’d regret it forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pomegranate Seeds

They’d had another fight, one that had quickly turned into a shouting match. She’d been clumsy, careless trying to capture a Weevil in the Underground and nearly gotten her neck broken. It apparently hadn’t been bad enough having Pete shout at her and Mickey attempt to scold her; walking slowly back to the flat, head throbbing (the medic had said she may have a concussion), Loki did not say a word. He simply seethed, occasionally glaring over at her.

Rose sighed, throwing herself down onto the couch and immediately regretting it, holding in the groan as the angry creature in her head threatened to burst out. The keys fell from her limp hand onto the floor and she said quietly, “Go ‘head. I know you wanna shout at me. Go right ahead. I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

Loki stood in the doorway, arms crossed, face stony. “You were reckless today.” His tone was even and calm, but Rose flinched away from his voice. “You were reckless, and if you have been alone you would have been killed.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t, and I’m still here.”

“That’s not good enough!”

“What do you want me to say, Loki? I made a mistake, and I paid for it. It’s over now.”

“You could have died!”

“Why do you care?!” Without fully realizing it, Rose was standing, swaying and unsteady on her feet. “You’re so convinced I’m going to get myself killed with the dimension cannon, why does it matter if it happens sooner rather than later?”

“Because I don’t want you to die, you stupid girl!”

“What? All you ever talk about is how I confine you, limit you, how I’ve stolen your freedom and you can’t wait to be rid of me, what does it matter—”

“ _Because I love you!_ You are childish and greedy and care nothing for anything besides finding your precious _Doctor_ ,” he spat, “but you have wormed your way into my mind, a place where you have no right to be and for some reason I care whether you live or die! I can’t stand it! I _despise_ what you’ve done to me.”

She gaped at him, at a complete loss for words as her head throbbed and shook; she staggered slightly. “You… I…”

“What hold could you possibly have over me?” he sneered. “You hit your head, and now you can barely speak. You’re weak, fragile, so easily broken. In the grand design, humanity is nothing, it is worthless. What does that make you, _Rose Tyler_?”

She glared at him, straightening with a power beyond her own, voice reverberating in the room and ringing with the echoes of the past. “I am Rose Tyler. I am the Bad Wolf.” Her voice was clear, and the air around her cracked with electricity. “I am part of the Time Vortex and I have stared into the Void. I have looked into the face of the Emperor of the Daleks and I destroyed him. I have faced false gods of pantheons across time and space.

“I am greater than you, Loki, son of Odin.”

The room clouded with rage, and Loki fought the urge to wrap his hands around her throat, breathing heavily as they stared at each other in silence.

“You know _nothing_ , Rose Tyler. You believe me to be powerless, at your mercy, but truly I stayed because I _could_ , because from here I could learn, and now you are of no use to me. Now I am taking back my freedom. You will not see me again.”

He turned on his heel and stormed from the flat without a backward glance.

At the slamming of the door, Rose staggered again and collapsed backwards onto the couch; her ears rang with energy and her head throbbed from the weight of the argument and the many tears threatening to fall. Her body felt too small to hold the flood of emotions churning inside her, but she did not weep. She did not make a sound.

Instead she lay down and stared into the upholstery of the couch until finally, against the medic’s orders, she fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

Even in her sleep she ached.

*****

_Rose._

The whisper was faint, especially in the rush of the city centre, but it sent electricity coursing through her blood. It couldn’t be…

_Rose._

She wondered if he was doing this on purpose; she recalled the night she had recounted Bad Wolf Bay to him, lying side by side with their eyes closed on her wide balcony underneath a starry sky. Her voice then had been as quiet as his was now, and he had not spoken, but she knew had absorbed every word.

Could he possibly know that the dimension cannon had failed?

The questions were pointless. Somehow, Rose knew that he was entirely aware of what he was doing to her now—he knew that every shiver of excitement down her spine was augmented by a stabbing pain between her ribs.

“Rose? Rose!” Jackie was shaking her, eyes wide, looking scared.

Rose’s attention snapped back, but there was a wondering look in her eyes that told her mother that she wasn’t really there at all. “What?”

“You just…stopped. Middle of the street, Rose! What were you thinking, you could have been killed!”

The panic in Jackie’s face gave her pause, but she furrowed her brow as the last words sent her back to the last night she’d spent with Loki.

_Rose._

That voice was drawing her away, tugging at a string tied to her hand; she swore she could see it, red and shining, begging her to follow it away from her mother and into the city. She didn’t know why she trusted it, but she did. There was something right about it, something natural—something that told her if she didn’t follow it, she’d regret it forever.

Rose shook her head to move away some of the haze, but the determination to find the voice did not leave; if anything, it was stronger now that the world was clearer.

“Mum, I’ve gotta go. I’ve gotta… There’s something I need to do.”

Jackie looked up at her in confusion, gripping her daughter’s upper arm tightly. “What do you mean, what do you need to do?”

She pried her mother’s hands off and looked around, absolutely sure that she would know where to go when she found it. “I’ve just…I’ve gotta go, Mum, I’ll come back, I swear.”

“Rose, don’t!”

But Rose had already vanished into the crowd, leaving Jackie panicked and looking in every direction, trying to press fruitlessly through the crowds moving against her. She shouted for Rose a few times, but her daughter was gone, and Jackie slumped in defeat, afraid but resigned to returning home, finished with her shopping for the day.

There was a fear growing in the pit of her stomach that Rose might not return, and if she did she would not be the same. All of the sudden, the city around her had gone grey.

*****

Rose was running, her heart bouncing and thudding against her ribs with every beat of her feet on the ground. She didn’t know where she was going, but she knew where to go, taking twists and turns with practiced ease and never wavering from her course; she felt no doubt.

When she finally stopped she still didn’t know where she was except that it was where she was meant to be—even if she was unsure what that meant. She bent to breathe, hands resting on her knees as her chest heaved, and something rustled behind her. Startled, she turned quickly to see but there was nothing there. For the first time, a thrill of fear wormed its way between the excitement and hurt bursting in her chest.

“Rose.”

Again she turned, nearly losing her balance as she found herself nose to nose with someone she thought she would never see again. True enough, he had promised that she would never see him again.

“L-Loki?” Rose looked up into his face and breathed heavily, taking a tentative step backward until she found her back against a wall.

“Hello, Rose Tyler.”

“You told me you’d not be comin’ back.”

“I…did not intend to.”

“So why did you, then? To play mind games with me?”

“To…see you.”

“To apologize?”

“I was out of line the last time we spoke, if that is what you would like to hear.”

“You’ve been trying to go back to Asgard, haven’t you? And you can’t.”

His face remained clear of emotion apart from the split-second that he flicked his eyes from hers; in that moment he looked…lost. She knew that for him, returning to Asgard was the same as building the dimension cannon had been for her. Without a place to channel the rage, the frustration and the pain and the loss, it was a rising wave inside him that had nowhere to go. They had both failed in the tasks that had torn them apart. Rose wondered if once again the universe’s sick sense of humor was having fun at her expense, pushing them back together, mirrors of each other’s wounded pride.

“I cannot,” he said finally. “And your dimension cannon?”

“Failed one time too many. One of the researchers I was working with…died. Pete shut down the project. Surely you know that. Did you come to gloat?”

“I came to see you. You are…the only home I have left, I suppose.”

Rose sighed. “Look at the pair of us,” she said. “Got no choice where to be, gotta be home where it’s not home, barely got any pride left. Some people would call us lost, wouldn’t they?”

Loki allowed himself something like a smile. “Aren’t we, though?”

“Maybe a little. Down but not out, I should say.”

Slowly, cautiously, as though she were approaching a wounded animal, Rose reached for him, resting her hand gently on his chest, over his heart. One heartbeat. One solid heartbeat, drumming steadily beneath her fingers.

After a moment, one of Loki’s hands moved to rest on the side of her neck, strands of gold hair brushing over his fingers. She gasped a little at the cold press of his skin, but all he could feel was her devastating warmth and the gentle thrumming of her pulse.

“You’re not forgiven, you know,” she said, looking into his eyes stubbornly. “You shouted at me and left without a word! Four months, Loki. Four. Bloody. Months. And bloody mind-control to get me here! What the hell do you think you’re doing, Loki?!”

His face turned hard. “I merely led the way—you followed. You are here by choice, Rose Tyler.”

“And what’s this ‘Rose Tyler’ nonsense about, anyway? Always, ‘Rose Tyler this’, ‘Rose Tyler that’. Rose is a perfectly good name, no matter what’s going on in that head of yours.”

Loki groaned, the sound shaking under Rose’s hand as it rumbled deep in his chest.

“What?”

“You talk too much…Rose.”

Without warning he jerked her forward, his hand now at the back of her neck as he kissed her fiercely. He could feel the warmth of her threatening to overtake him, to crush him completely, the overwhelming strength of the wolf slumbering in her chest as it started to awaken; something in him growled in response.

Rose tried to focus, tried to hold on to the stubborn, willful anger that had focused itself on him since he had left. She wanted to protest, to fight, to give him back all the hurt he’d given her threefold but it was all falling to the wayside as he pressed her back against the brick wall and kissed her harder.

They broke apart and Rose suddenly wished that Loki would look as disheveled and unsure as she did as he leaned his forehead against hers. She gasped for air while he merely stared at her, his breathing hardly disturbed.

“I’m still angry with you, you know,” she said, gasping slightly.

Loki furrowed his brow in frustration and leaned forward to kiss her again, deeply, repeatedly.

To Rose, each kiss felt like something final—something red and shining, drawing her away from her world and into something deeper. She couldn’t tell if that something was dark or not, but she thought it might be, if Loki was the one leading her there; the thought occurred to her that maybe he was just as in the dark as she was.

_Lost things…_

Maybe they were more lost than she wanted to admit. Maybe letting Loki back in was taking pomegranate seeds from the hand of Hades.

But the Doctor had taken Rose to meet them once, and Hades really wasn’t all that bad. Persephone, after all, was the bringer of Spring. Winter to Spring. Dark to light. Lost to found—or, at the very least, less lost.

Rose sighed, and wriggled away from the wall. She did not take his hand—they had far too many things to discuss first—but she smiled and beckoned for him to follow. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go home.”


End file.
